Dive Brief:
- An Arkansas law requiring all classrooms and libraries to display the Ten Commandments was temporarily blocked in four school districts Monday by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.
- In the Aug. 4 preliminary injunction, which came just a day before the new law was set to take effect, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Brooks said Arkansas Act 573 “is plainly unconstitutional” under the First Amendment’s establishment and free exercise clauses.
- Brooks’ order comes at a time when similar bills are cropping up in other state legislatures and legal battles continue over Ten Commandments laws in Texas and Louisiana.
Dive Insight:
With federal judges in Louisiana and Arkansas finding that state laws requiring Ten Commandments displays in schools are unconstitutional, it’s possible likely one of these cases could ultimately make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If so, it would not be the first time the high court has weighed in on the display of the Ten Commandments in schools. The last time such a case came before the Supreme Court was 1980’s Stone v. Graham, in which the justices wrote in an unsigned ruling that a Kentucky statute — similar to the current Louisiana law — violated the establishment clause.
In more recent cases, however, the majority of the Supreme Court has been more sympathetic toward religion in public schools.
In 2022, for example, the Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that a Washington school district violated a football coach’s First Amendment rights when it fired him for praying on the 50-yard line — at times including students — after his team’s games.
But Brooks’ order temporarily blocking the Arkansas law on Monday referred to Supreme Court decisions on religion in schools including Kennedy, saying that case “does not alter the reasoning and outcome of Stone.” In fact, he wrote that the Supreme Court “explicitly acknowledged that state-mandated religious displays and practices in the public-school setting are subject to special treatment because public-school children are a captive audience.”
More Republican-leaning states are also testing the boundaries of religion in schools through a growing number of likeminded bills, including Oklahoma, Utah, South Carolina, and North Dakota.
Louisiana became the first state to enact a law requiring schools to display the religious directives in 2024. In June, however, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Rev. Roake v. Brumley that the state’s mandate for Louisiana classrooms was unconstitutional.
Shortly after Texas enacted its own Ten Commandments requirements for schools in June, a lawsuit challenging the edict was filed in July by a group of 16 multi-faith and nonreligious families in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. The plaintiffs are also seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the state from implementing the law as the case moves through the courts, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the plaintiffs alongside the ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP.
In his Monday order on Arkansas’ mandate, Brooks questioned the motives behind the recent wave of Ten Commandments laws in states nationwide, calling the state "part of a coordinated strategy among several states to inject Christian religious doctrine into public-school classrooms."
“These states view the past decade of rulings by the Supreme Court on religious displays in public spaces as a signal that the Court would be open to revisiting its precedent on religious displays in the public-school context,” Brooks wrote.
